Google may be expanding the number of services it offers, but the majority of its income is generated from advertising. So taking the decision to introduce a third-party extensions system to Chrome, much like Firefox has with its add-ons, may turn out to be a double-edged sword.

On the one hand it will allow developers to make Chrome more useful, but on the other it could mean those all-important advertisements start getting blocked. And that’s exactly what is threatening to happen as one of the first extensions already announced and available for Chrome is called AdSweep.

With AdSweep installed most if not all advertisements are blocked from any web pages you visit. But AdSweep developer Charles-Andre Landermaine doesn’t think it will cause Google any problems, he said:

I don’t think this really puts a dent into Google’s revenue … There are so few users of Chrome, let alone AdSweep, so the loss of revenue for Google is peanuts, really.

When asked for their opinion by the Los Angeles Times Google just responded with:

We are designing Google Chrome’s extensions to be flexible enough to support all different types of features, and we are encouraged by the development that we’ve seen in this area so far.

Chrome’s extensions system is not implemented in a final state yet, and its users only make up a very small percentage of the total browser-using population right now. The question remains, however, if Google rely so heavily on advertising revenue will they be tempted to block extensions that stop adverts being displayed in Chrome eventually?

Matthew’s Opinion
I think at the moment it makes no difference to Google whether you use an advert blocker in Chrome or not. Chrome’s market share is below 2% with Internet Explorer still the most popular choice and Firefox a firm second. AdBlock has been available for a long time for Firefox and I haven’t heard Google complain about that.

Even though ad blockers exist their use is not going to be as widespread as people expect. Most users just load up their browser and start using it, they don’t think about extensions and many probably don’t even know they exist.

If the blocking of adverts got serious then action would be taken, but likely in the form of websites blocking the content you navigated to and asking you to disable the ad blocker for their site before you can see the content. I’ve already seen that attempted on a few sites, but have no idea if it drove users away or got them to white list the site.